PlayStation staff left stunned by Sony-Microsoft partnership

Many an eyebrow was raised over Sony and Microsoft's recently announced partnership, but it wasn't just the general public who were caught unprepared - Sony's PlayStation team was even more stumped and some employees demanded reassurances.

According to a report by Bloomberg, Sony and Microsoft started talking sometime in 2018, but the whole arrangement was made at the highest level.

What this did was bypass the entire PlayStation unit, which meant they've learned about it at the same time the rest of us did.

Unfortunately for Sony, the reaction reportedly ranged from disbelief to outright demands for an official explanation, as many of the PlayStation unit's workers started asking questions on what this means for the next-gen console.

Bloomberg's sources claim that managers had to calm workers down and reassure them that nothing changes in terms of Sony's future plans, except that Microsoft will switch from a bad guy to a friend in need.

Microsoft and Sony already announced that they plan to beat Stadia's GPU with their next-gen offerings, and Google is considered to be the main reason for the two joining forces.

There's no question that both of the companies will be seeing some sort of immediate profit from this, but opinions on the long-run advantages of such a move differ.

On one hand, Sony can now skip immediate investments in cloud computing and switch some of the PlayStation Now load to Microsoft's infrastructure, pitting the two against Google and Amazon.

Others fear that such an arrangement won't work for Sony in the long-run, as the company will have to pay Microsoft for cloud services while simultaneously competing with them.

Naturally, game streaming still has a long way to go before it's even considered a universally viable gaming method, and its dependence on bandwidth is likely to keep it out of some markets for a while more.

Sony
PlayStation 4

Sony and Microsoft, however, are well aware that playing catch-up isn't a position you want to be in when in this business, so once the war breaks out, they'll be ready.